Match his energy(or lack there of LOL)

     I took Gingy out to play in the pasture the other day.  At the beginning he showed a definite lack of energy and interest.  First I tried adding adding extra vigor to my requests, but this got an even less enthusiastic response.  Then it Linda's words about doing less so that they want to do more dawned on me.  So I matched is energy and then a little less and that's what it took.  It was actually kind of fun, to play the dominant little lazy horse. 

     For the rest of the session, whenever he lost interest, I would amble towards him(using as little energy as possible) and then give him a little flick.  Pretty soon he was jumping out of his skin every time I turned my gaze on him LOL.  He still kept trying to for the grass, but he kept an eye on me and that's what I wanted. 

     We did some pretty neat stuff with sideways and circling.  We did sideways, both towards and away over the pole, on both sides.  Then we worked on the falling leaf pattern.  Playing with the falling leaf was really fun, because Gingy actually wanted to trot, and he had a hard time walking!  So he made a definite change over the course of the session, in terms of energy.  He had a little trouble with the disengament part going to the right, so I broke it down for him.  In fact I got use the new sideways stuff I taught him to help him learn the falling leaf.  I would have him sideways out a fair distance while my feet remained still, then I would disengage him.  When he was good at this we did the falling leaf at the walk and then at the trot.  He gave me one really good disengagement and that's where we ended the online portion of the session. 

      I ended up sitting on Gingy for awhile, just doing lateral flexion, and direct rein.  It ended up that once again, we needed to go shut the gate.  So Mom lead Gingy with me atop him down the road to accomplish our mission.  It went really well and Gingy was perfectly calm.  He was also a perfect gentleman; he didn't try to push mom from behind as he as done in past and he had a good expression on his face.  Ah, it was a nice horse day.